one, they've become more demographically mixed, including immigrant, folks from rural areas, and two, they were hit hard by the recession, creating economic hardship that used to exist mainly in inner cities. city centers have seen an upward trend in recent year, drawing more people back into urban areas and the suburbs have struggle. today, there are more poor americans living in the suburbs than the inner city. digest that fact. the trends have redrawn the political map. instead of red and blue state, political divisions are more likely to be delineated by population density. in fact, you can see the breaking point clearly when you map obama and romney voters by population. the split split comes right around 850 people per square mile pimt's an area similar to the size of knox county, tennessee, knoxville, or bucks county, pennsylvania, right outside of philadelphia. people in more crowded areas tend to be obama voters. those in less populated areas tended to vote romney. overall, democrats do best in heavily populated areas and heavily populated suburbs even when they are in red st